• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 962 0

his finger, was as viscous as currant jelly. His lungs were ash-colored, and a multitude of little bluish-red lesions appeared in a grayish frothy liquid. The man must have died by drowning in his own secretions. Hearts, livers and spleens had tripled in size, windpipes were full of purulent clots. Without exception, all the organs seemed to have been ravaged by the gas, including the brains, which were covered with a gelatinous, opalescent film. The extent of the damage was terrifying even to specialists as hardened as old Chandra and his young colleague. A smell confirmed their suspicions as to the nature of the agent responsible—a smell that was unmistakable. All the bodies they autopsied gave off the same smell of bitter almonds, the smell of hydrocyanide acid. Here was the confirmation of what Jagannathan Mukund had let slip to Bhopal’s commissioner. When it broke down, MIC released hydrocyanide acid, which instantly destroyed the cells’ ability to transport oxygen. It was hydrocyanide acid that had killed the great majority of Bhopalis who died that infernal night.

The pathologists’ discovery was vitally important, because hydrocyanide acid poisoning had an antidote: a commonplace substance, sodium thiosulfate or hyposulfate, well known to photographers who use it to fix their negatives. Mass injecting with hyposulfate might possibly save thousands of victims. Chandra and Satpathy rushed to Professor Mishra who was coordinating the medical aid with his team. Strangely, the professor refused to believe his colleagues’ findings and follow their recommendations. As far as he was concerned, the presence of hydrocyanide acid was an invention of the forensic pathologists’ overactive imaginations.

“You take care of the dead and let me take care of the living!” he told them.

No one would really be able to account for this reaction on the part of the illustrious professor. It would deprive the victims of a treatment that might have saved their lives.

Dawn broke at last on that apocalyptic night: a crystal clear sunrise. The minarets, cupolas and palaces were lit up by the sun’s rays and life asserted itself once more in the entanglement of alleyways in the old part of town. Everything seemed the same. And yet some places looked like war zones on the morning after a battle. Hundreds of corpses of men, women and children, cows, buffaloes, dogs and goats were all over the place. Deeply alarmed by the situation, Commissioner Ranjit Singh went to the nearby colleges in areas that had been spared and enlisted students to pick up bodies. At the Maulana Azad Technical College, he found dozens of volunteers.

“Divide yourselves up into two teams,” he told them. “Muslims in one, Hindus in the other, and each can look after their own dead.”

His suggestion provoked a vehement reaction. “Is there any difference between Hindus and Muslims at a tragic time like this?” objected one student.

“Is there even a god when such a catastrophe is allowed to happen?” said another.

“I made myself very small,” the commissioner said afterward. “I was trying to think of the strongest possible terms in which to thank them.”

With bandannas over their mouths and noses, the students set off on scooters for the slums that Colonel Khanuja and his trucks had partially evacuated during the night. There were still a few survivors left among the mass of bodies. Student Santosh Katiyar was party to a scene that touched him deeply. While he was preparing to remove the body of a Muslim woman from one of the huts in Chola, a hand stopped him. A woman, whom he recognized by the red dot on her forehead as a Hindu, slipped all her bracelets off her wrist and slid them onto her dead neighbor’s arm.

“She was my friend,” she explained, “she must look beautiful to meet her god.”

A little farther on, Santosh noticed four veiled Muslim women, sitting under the porch roof to a small Hindu temple. They were consoling a woman who had lost her entire family. In such extreme distress, distinctions of religion, caste or background vanished. Very swiftly, however, the